


Broken

by Woolverine



Series: Even Shadows Dream [3]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 07:54:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10940232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woolverine/pseuds/Woolverine





	Broken

The noises from the bar could barely be heard, only the pounding beat of the music vibrated through the metal floor and walls. The two men sitting at the small table exchanged data pads, read through the contents, then put them down on the table.

“Agreeable?” the angaran asked.

“Yes, in principle. There are some details which need further work. What if we…?”

The human paused, as the door lock was overridden from the outside, the door sliding openly smoothly. The amoured figure stood backlit by the flashing neon, saying nothing. There was a krogan there too, the silhouette was of old fashioned armour, decorated with curving bone. Nakmor Drack. He seemed to be pushing the other figure forward, or least preventing them from backing away.

Reyes made a small gesture to his angaran colleague, who picked up both datapads then moved past the the newcomers without saying a word. 

“I was hoping you would stop by,” Reyes said, standing, taking a step forward. His hand reached out towards her.

Ryder moved into the private room just enough for the door to close. She didn’t say anything. She hadn’t removed her helmet so all Reyes could see was the distorted reflection of his own image in the faceplate. 

“Sara?”

She turned to the side, opening the faceplate with a smooth movement, then looking back at him. Even in this dim light Reyes could see the vivid colour of a fresh scar curving from her temple down onto her cheek. 

“I don’t know why I’m here, why I came to see you,” the Pathfinder said. “I had no intention of stepping into this room ever again. Drack said I needed to talk, dragged me here.”

Reyes let his hand drop to his side limply. He slumped back into his seat. His hopes had spiraled skyward as soon as he had recognised the Pathfinder’s silhouette. Now they were plummeting downwards even faster than they had risen. He grabbed his drink and downed it.

“Perhaps you should leave then,” he responded, his voice suddenly hoarse, and not from the rotgut.

She paced forward, one, two, three steps, stopping again in the middle of the room. Ryder pulled her helmet off, exposing a skull shorn free of hair. The helmet fell from her loose grip, and she flinched at the loud clang of metal landing on metal. 

“Reyes.” It was more than a whisper, less than a moan.

He didn’t make the decision to move, but suddenly he was next to Sara, taking her in his arms, pressing his face against the side of her head. Reyes inhaled the unique scent of her, trying to commit it to memory in case he was never this close to Sara again. 

“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me.”

Sara took a deep breath. “I don’t know where to start, Reyes.”

As always, the way she said his name caught at him, sent a shiver straight through to his soul. Reyes struggled to resist an impulse to place kisses along the edge of Sara’s ear. 

“Just start somewhere, and we’ll make sense of it together,” he suggested.

“I knew there was a darkness inside me. I knew. But I ignored it. It’s the wolf you feed that wins, after all.”

Reyes began to stroke her head, feeling the sweat and the start of stubble.

“Before Habitat 7 I’d never killed anyone. In the Milky Way I was basically a glorified bodyguard and scout for an archaeology unit, looking for Prothean artifacts. The most danger I ever faced was when two researchers got into a brawl over who had finished off the last of the cereal.

“Now all I do is kill. My first ever kill was a kett. I kept count, you know. Then there were so many kett, I stopped including them. Not really individuals, merely clones or something. Not people.” She choked back a sob. “Dad’s training took me through my first firefight on automatic. I didn’t think because I didn’t need to.”

“That is why we train.”

Sara nodded. “Dad said habit would see us through situations where thinking would take too long. 

“Then there was Havarl, and the Roekaar. It was hard to keep count in the jungle, when they sniped from trees and ruins. I tried though. They were fuelled by misplaced hate but they were people, they deserved a place in my memory.”

“Come and sit down, Sara.” Reyes guided her across the room, pushed her gently down onto the worn plush seating. He unfastened her gloves and peeled them from her hands so he could hold them tightly. She unclipped her weapons and stacked them on the table, before slumping forward, her head in her hands, between her knees. Reyes sat next to her, arm across her shoulder, gave her an encouraging squeeze. 

“What kept me going was that Dad had chosen me. He saved my life AND he chose me to be Pathfinder. In those last moments, he could have transferred SAM to Cora, but he didn’t, he chose me. That meant he thought I was worthy, capable of doing this job, and doing it well. That meant he believed in me and I’d never felt that before. Dad didn’t suffer fools, and  
I thought he’d finally seen ME, seen that I was worth his time.”

“A few weeks ago I went to a base used by scavengers on Elaaden. I wiped them all out. All dead, couldn’t tell you how many died by my hand. They weren’t even that big a problem, a group of small timers banding together for safety, but it never occurred to me to try and redeem any of them. Didn’t seem worth effort. Shoot them all and let God sort it out!” Sara laughed bitterly. 

“Went in with Drack and Vetra, a couple of them opened fire on us, so we worked our way through systematically, killed everyone who even twitched. I didn’t recognise myself any more. But I could deal, Dad had believed in me. He had chosen ME.”

“Ah, my darling,” Reyes murmured, pulling her closer. 

“I don’t know what I’ve become. Heleus has changed me. I’m the Pathfinder, only the Pathfinder. I kill, and I manipulate, and I steal, and I loot corpses, and I get applauded for it. I’m not Sara any more.”

“Heleus has changed us all. I’m not the person I was in the Milky Way. I’ve done terrible things, things I would never have considered before. Look at me.”

Sara opened her eyes and gazed up at him, steadily. 

“No matter what you do, what title you have, to me you will always be Sara, the laughing woman with the bad jokes, who is as grumpy as a krogan with sand in their armour, with the discerning eyes that saw through my layers of masks without even trying.” He stroked her cheek, following the line of the new scar.

She exhaled, nodded. “Thank you, Reyes.”

“Now, continue. Tell me the rest.”

“Dad had hidden memories and logs in SAM, with objectives I needed to meet before they’d all unlock. First it was memories of my mother, then there were some about the Initiative, then I jumped through the final hoop, and I read the final log.” Sara’s breathing was ragged, almost choking as she spoke.

“What did it say, Sara?”

“My mother isn’t dead, he put in her stasis before she died. She’s on the Hyperion under a false name. He transferred Pathfinder authority to me because I’m to find a cure for Mum, fix her, bring her back to life. He couldn’t put his trust in Cora to do that, so me or Scott HAD to be next in line. Scott was in a coma. Dad didn’t choose me as Pathfinder because he believed in me or my abilities. He choose me because he was going to die, because only with me in authority, could Mum live again. All the awful, horrible things I’ve done, because Dad believed in me, and it was all based on falsehood. It was never about me.”

She pressed her face into his shoulder and let the tears come. Reyes kept stroking her head, pressing dry kisses against her bare scalp. She needed this release, but it was breaking his heart listening to her sob, feeling the damp against his neck. Sara clung to him, turned her head, and now it was her mouth moving against his neck. Reyes swallowed, hard. The soft feel of Sara’s lips was driving every good intention out of his head. He tried to resist, but when her mouth moved to his ear lobe and her teeth tugged it gently, Reyes broke. He took hold of Sara’s shoulders and pulled her round, up, so their lips could meet and devour each other.

After their months of separation, they were desperate for each other. Reyes cupped Sara’s face in his hands and lost himself in the sensation he’d thought he’d never experience again. It was sublime, perfection he hadn’t believed in in the Milky Way. It was worth six hundred years of being frozen, worth another six hundred years in stasis. 

It was worth his entire existence, his whole life, everything he had ever done and ever seen.

But he didn’t deserve this wonder, no matter how much he wanted it… her… to be his for the rest of time. Somehow he managed to summon up the strength to move away. 

Sara moaned in protest, her eyes unfocused with desire. Reyes stood, walked across the room, leaned against the metal wall.

“Reyes?” she asked, her confusion evident. 

“Once I would have taken advantage of your vulnerability to get you into bed. But I’ve changed. You’ve changed me, Sara. As much as I want to kiss you, make love to you, I will not use your distress to worm my way in. I will not make love to you simply because you are in need of comfort, knowing that when you recover you may reject me again. I can’t…” he broke off, his voice cracking with emotion.

“So you don’t want me,” Sara responded flatly. 

He was back with her in an instant, kneeling before her. “I didn’t know what want was, before you. I didn’t understand need either. I don’t have words strong enough to describe how I have missed seeing you, talking to you, touching you.”

Reyes ran his hand through his hair. “I would put out the stars for a chance to be in your heart but if I lose you again, I will lose part of myself. If we make love now, and then, when you are no longer so upset, you decide it was a mistake, I don’t know how I will recover again.”

Sara closed her eyes and laid her cheek against his. Her breathing was uneven, her voice a whisper. “You’re probably right, Reyes. I need comfort, and you are the only person I could imagine talking to about this. Not even Scott. It wouldn’t be right for our first time together to happen because I’m a wreck. But… I have needed to be with you so badly. I have missed you so much. Every day, I have forced myself not to think of you even though it’s only my memories of you which help me through the nights. All I can think of right now is holding onto you and never letting go.” She pulled away. “I’ll leave, let you get on with your life. I’m never going to be whole again, and you deserve someone better than a woman who can’t be fixed.”

“In ancient Japan, when something beautiful was broken, they didn’t discard it. They didn’t try to mend it invisibly either. They mended it with gold, incorporating the breaks into the object, adding another layer to its beauty. Never say you can’t be fixed, Sara. That your father didn’t see the value in you shows what a shortsighted fool he was. Nothing you have achieved here was down to your father. You did this. You made Eos viable, got the first successful Initiative outpost. You forged a relationship with a new species. You kicked the kett off Voeld. You brought the krogan back when no one thought that was possible. All this was you, Sara Ryder. Never say you don’t have value, or talent, or skill. You have everything.”

Reyes kissed her firmly, with a closed mouth. “You are everything.”


End file.
